


Programming

by Yevynaea



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Ending, Blood and Injury, Burns, Character Death, Character Death Fix, Comic Book Science, Corpses, Dubious Science, Friendship, Gen, I'm Sorry, Mild Gore, Murder, One Shot, Panic Attacks, Partial Mind Control, Psychological Trauma, Reunions, Robots, Sibling Love, Violence, disposal of corpses, except actually not that happy an ending, literally the worst fix-it in the history of fix-its, robot character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-23
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-08 17:38:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3217742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yevynaea/pseuds/Yevynaea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, the one where Tadashi's alive, but everything's still awful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Programming

**Author's Note:**

> So you know that one AU where the fire fused Tadashi with the microbots? And the one where he's Yokai? And the possible AU of having Baymax actually kill Callaghan on the island? Yeah this is all of those mashed into one terrible thing and I apologize in advance.

He wakes up and he can remember flames, can remember screaming as he burns. There's a burn on the side of his face; from the explosion. It curls around the side of his eye and around to his misshapen ear, and down his neck. It covers his shoulder, wraps around his arm and takes up half of his back, and there are patches where there's dark metal and bits of silver wire melted into his flesh, fused with his skin. It should hurt more than it does, he thinks, it should be agonizing, but it isn't, which is somehow worse. The metal under his skin used to be his little brother's microbots, and he thinks that's why they listen to him. He thinks that it's also why _he_ listens to _Callaghan_ , why his thoughts and identity get pushed down by the need to follow whatever telepathic order the professor gives him.

Callaghan forces him to stay back, out of sight, when his friends and brother break into the island, dressed up like superheroes and is that Baymax that's with them? Tadashi wants to call out, wants to run and hug his friends and comfort his baby brother, wants to scream that he's alive, alive, _alive_. But Callaghan orders him to stay hidden, stay silent, stay still, don't let them see you they _must not see you_.

When the mask comes off and everyone sees Callaghan's face, the order to stay hidden still stands and it takes Tadashi too long to shake it off and regain control. Hiro and Callaghan are talking, are arguing, and Tadashi hears his name but he still can’t move, can’t speak.

"That was his mistake!" Callaghan shouts at Hiro. Hiro's expression hardens into one Tadashi's never seen on his brother. It's cold and dangerous and _enraged_ , and it’s terrifying.

"Baymax, destroy." Hiro orders.

"My programming prevents me from injuring a human being--"

"Not anymore." Hiro takes the green chip out of the robot's chest, tosses it aside, and Baymax’s eyes go red, he shoots a rocket fist toward Callaghan but the professor dives out of the way. The others are trying to stop Baymax but it isn't going to be enough to save Callaghan, Tadashi can tell, and he finally snaps himself out of it and takes control of the microbots, and they surge up under his feet. When he rushes forward to try and help stop Baymax, the microbots accidentally crush the medical chip, which he flinches at because that's what makes Baymax, Baymax, and now it's gone. His friends are distracted enough by the appearance of what their first glance tells them is a second enemy, that the robot is able to fire his rocket-fist at Callaghan again.

This time, Baymax doesn't miss.

Baymax stops his rampage, then, but his eyes are still red and he'll probably never go back to being what he was before, not without the chip. The others all turn away from Callaghan's broken body, Honey Lemon drops to her knees and all of them look about ready to throw up.  Wasabi and GoGo slowly walk over to Hiro, who's shaking with wide-eyed fear, and guilt, and disbelief.

"What you just did, we never signed up for."

"I--" Hiro begins shakily, but freezes when he catches sight of Tadashi. They all turn in the same direction.

"Oh my god." Honey Lemon breathes.

"Tadashi?" Hiro asks, shaking from head to toe. Tadashi's pretty sure he's crying, and also pretty sure he doesn't care. He nods, tears running down his face.

"Oh, god." Honey Lemon puts a hand over her mouth. She glances from him to Baymax, to Hiro, to Callaghan, then back to Tadashi. Then she lets out a broken sob. "He was never dead."

The others all squeeze their eyes shut, as if that can take away the image of Callaghan's blood and brains staining the ground. Hiro lets all the air out of his lungs with a heaving sob, and then he slumps forward, unconscious, and Tadashi sends microbots forward to catch him with barely a thought.

"We need to get out of here." Fred says. "We need to go home, we need to get away from here before--"

"Before what, someone shows up?" Wasabi laughs, harshly and hysterically. "No one's going to come here. And Callaghan's a dead man already, no one's looking for him." The others flinch, and Wasabi seems to shrink into himself, his expression falling back into one of distress. "Sorry."

"I can take us home." Tadashi says quietly, and they all turn to him. "The microbots...I can take us all back to the mainland."

"Good idea." Gogo nods. Then she takes a step back, eyes flicking over him with increasing unease. "Wait...How are you controlling the microbots without a mask?"

Tadashi doesn't say anything in reply, just pulls his coat collar and his turtleneck down to display the metal fused into the side of his neck.

"Oh my god." Wasabi looks away, and his eyes find Baymax, from whom he recoils. "What do we do with him?"

"His medical chip," Tadashi looks for the chip in question. "He needs it; but it's broken." He has the microbots pick it up, deliver it to him. It's cracked, practically shattered; a few pieces have fallen off completely. But the name written on top, though now missing a letter from the first word, is still legible.

"Will the chip still work, if it's broken?" Fred asks. No one seems to have an answer, not even Tadashi. He goes over to Baymax, opening the port in the bot's chest and placing the chip inside. Nothing happens, and the others all slump in disappointment. Sighing, Tadashi removes the chip again, and the red one. The former he tucks carefully into his pocket, the latter he drops and crushes under his heel. Baymax is silent and still, and unless someone recovers him from this island and brings him back, he always will be.

Tadashi looks at his friends, all still in shock, and his little brother, still unconscious and cradled safely by the microbots. Everyone startles when he has the bots move Hiro toward the door he knows will lead them out of the building.

"Let's go home."

 

•••••••

 

He wakes up and he can remember shouting, blood spattering and the sickening sound of a skull being crushed by metal moving too fast, the same sound again when the man-- the corpse-- hits the ground. Hiro rolls onto his side and his stomach decides to empty all its contents onto the floor, except there isn't a floor and the microbots holding him up scatter to the side to let the bile hit the water below. He looks up, sees Tadashi ahead of him, looking at him sadly. Hiro turns and sees everyone else sitting solemnly behind them on what’s effectively a raft of microbots, but he doesn’t see Baymax, which just makes him think of what he did. And then he passes out again.

When Hiro wakes up the second time, he’s still sick to his stomach but there’s nothing left in it, and he’s gone completely numb, just like the night of the fire when everything was too much so he just shut down because he couldn’t handle it. He opens his eyes, looks around at Fred’s room where Hiro’s been laid out on the bed, listens to the others talk amongst themselves across the room.

“...should really go home and get some rest, Tadashi.” Honey Lemon says, and Hiro can hear her give a little breath of a laugh. “You’ve got scruff.”

Tadashi laughs a little bit too, no doubt rubbing at the almost-beard that just serves to remind them all of where he’s been all this time.

“Except he can’t go home without raising questions about where he’s been.” Gogo points out to the other girl, and Tadashi sighs, replying for Honey.

“I know. But what about Aunt Cass?”

“I didn’t say you shouldn’t go home.” Gogo points out. “I just want to know that we’re all going to be ready for whatever comes after.”

“Can’t be any worse than what’s already happened.” Wasabi says tiredly.

“Getting caught always makes everything worse.” Gogo says seriously, and Hiro hears the shift of fabric like she’s standing up. Gogo doesn’t try to sugarcoat the situation, only speaks bluntly, and just quietly enough that everyone has to be silent and listen to be able to hear her. “We were all just accomplices to a murder. A really fucking traumatizing one, honestly. And it doesn’t matter that everyone thinks Callaghan died in the fire, because if Tadashi goes home and has to answer questions, there’s bound to be someone who starts digging, and we can’t afford to not have a backup plan if anyone finds their way onto that island. Or if Krei or the government decide to go back to it.”

“I can help with backup plans; money can make a lot of things disappear. Or so I’ve read.” Fred says, an attempt at a joke that falls flat. Honey Lemon takes a breath, steeling herself.

“I can make sodium hydroxide in the labs at school, if we need it.” She nearly whispers, sounding like she had to force the words out, but she doesn’t try to take them back.

Everyone’s silent for a minute, and Hiro draws his legs up to his chest, wraps his arms around himself, fingernails digging into his upper arms almost hard enough to break skin while it gets harder and harder to breathe through the roaring static in his head.

“Hiro!” Everyone’s shouting and running toward him and that just makes it worse, he shuts his eyes and he can’t breathe, can’t breathe, his heart’s beating too big in his chest and he’s shaking again, he knows he is, and he wants to stop it but he can’t, can’t stop shaking, can’t start breathing again…Tadashi’s voice barely cuts through the fog. “You’re okay, Hiro. You’re safe. You’re okay.”

 _Are you, though? Any of you?_ Hiro would say if he had any air in his lungs to shape the words with. When he gets back his breath, he looks up, sees the others standing nearby, looking worried, sees Tadashi kneeling by the bed with a hand held out toward Hiro like he’s trying to calm a wild animal, and some bitter part of Hiro’s mind thinks _maybe he is_.

“I’m sorry.” He murmurs, barely a sound at all, and Tadashi’s face crumples in what Hiro sees as pity. He closes his eyes again so he won’t have to see his older brother’s face, or anyone else’s, but then all he sees is Callaghan’s body, mangled and broken and bloody and Hiro shakes even harder. His voice breaks when he speaks again, and he isn’t even sure who he’s talking to anymore, with everyone in front of him and the man he killed in his mind’s eye. “I’m _so_ sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” Someone assures him but the static is too loud to recognize whose voice it is, and it’s a blatant lie anyway so he doesn’t try to reply.

 

•••••••

 

They all stay the night at Fred’s house, because they’re too exhausted-- emotionally and physically-- to go anywhere else anyway. The next morning, Fred lends Tadashi some clean clothes so that he can shower and shave and get his own clothes washed, courtesy of Heathcliff, and everyone notices Tadashi’s fingers reaching up as if to play nervously with coat sleeves that aren’t there. He slips back into the coat as soon as the butler brings it back to him, murmuring a thank you and seeming to relax into the familiarity of the garment. They make a plan for Honey Lemon and Gogo to head to the school labs, then for all of them to go back to the island and get rid of anything that could end up being evidence.

Hiro, like all of them, doesn’t fall asleep until well into the night. But while the rest of them wake early, driven from sleep by memories stained with blood too fresh to allow peaceful dreams, Hiro sleeps until the afternoon, frowning and shaking and muttering in his sleep but not waking until the girls have already left. Tadashi puts a hand on his shoulder and Hiro bolts awake with a cry, both brothers recoiling as if struck.

“Sorry.” Tadashi says, his hand hovering in the air for a moment before he lets it drop back to his side. “I’m taking the others back to the island tonight. You going or staying?”

“S--” Hiro stops almost as soon as his lips begin to shape the word, hesitating, then he shakes his head. “Going.”

“Hiro--”

“I’m going.” Hiro says, and that’s that.

 

•••••••

 

They go back to the island once it’s dark, and it’s interesting the effect twenty-something hours can have on a decaying corpse. Honey Lemon has her hand pressed  over her mouth while she and Wasabi pour water and sodium hydroxide over the what used to be their professor. The mixture eats away at flesh and muscle and leaves little pieces of burnt-up bone that crumble away into nothing under Wasabi’s heel, even though he looks close to fainting and even closer to vomiting the entire time. Gogo scrubs, jaw clenched, at bloodstains left on concrete, and Fred and Hiro help Tadashi disassemble what was his greatest creation. The microbots scatter pieces of Baymax throughout the compound, leaving nothing to be found.

Hiro almost steps on Callaghan’s mask on the way out, scuffed and stained brown with dried blood, and he leans over, stops just before he can pick it up. He stands up again and walks past it, but then he hears the chatter of microbots behind him and he turns, sees his older brother rip the transmitter out of the mask and look it over for damage.

“What are you doing?” Hiro asks, and Tadashi looks at him, looks over him like he did with the mask, like he’s looking for something specific. Then he holds the transmitter out to Hiro.

“Here.” He says, and microbots skitter restlessly over his skin, under his feet, there’s metal in his flesh and obedient programming running in codes of binary that don’t belong in human minds, and he’s handing his free will and his life to the kid brother who murdered a man yesterday. Hiro wants to grab Tadashi by the shoulders, to shake him and ask if he understands how stupid he’s being, how bad a decision he’s making. But he knows Tadashi understands, so he doesn’t do that. He just takes the transmitter.

“Okay.” He says, because there’s too much hanging in the air between them to say much else.

_Take care of it. Take care of me._

_What if I can’t? What if I don’t?_

_I trust you._

_You shouldn’t._

“Okay.” Tadashi echoes, and it sounds like a reply to the latest thought running in conversation through Hiro’s mind and for a second he thinks Tadashi’s going to take the transmitter back. He doesn’t, just nods, once, and lets the microbots put him back on the ground so he can walk out of the building alongside his brother.

 

•••••••

 

None of them are ready to go home yet, to slip back into lives untouched by what Fred-- in another ill-advised attempt to lighten the mood-- deems their “accidental descent into supervillainy”. So Hiro calls Aunt Cass, numbly apologizes for worrying her, tells her he’s fine, he’s just staying at Fred’s house for a couple of days to work on a school project with the others, and he’s sorry he didn’t tell her beforehand, but no, she doesn’t have to call the police like she’d feared she might. Tadashi listens to the call and keeps his mouth shut tight, because Aunt Cass deserves better than to be alone talking to them over the phone when she learns he isn’t dead.

Hiro fiddles with the transmitter, goes home for a day to have access to his tools in the garage and to reassure Aunt Cass that he’s really fine (he isn’t, of course, but she can’t know that, and he’s numb enough right now that he can pretend to be okay). He miniaturizes his tech, quickly turns headband into chip and sticks it safely in his pocket, packs a backpack of Tadashi’s clothes and brings them back to Fred’s, shows the chip to his brother and presents his idea.

“Okay.” Tadashi says, after a long pause, and they ask Wasabi to help with the actual execution because if anyone can master surgical precision without any practice, it’s him.

Wasabi thinks they’re both nuts, but he helps them. Cuts the skin open at the base of Hiro’s skull and uses a laser to fuse the chip into Hiro like the microbots have burned into Tadashi. It works, and Tadashi feels his stomach flip in fear when the full weight of it hits him, having his entire being in the control of someone else again, but he pushes it down because despite everything Hiro is still so much better a person than Callaghan, and more than that Hiro’s his _brother_ and if Tadashi can’t trust his brother then he really can’t trust anyone.

Two days later and Tadashi looks at Hiro, and Hiro looks at Tadashi, and there’s binary code stretched in lines through their heads and metal under their skin and they both know that they’re past the point of no return, now, because they’ve waited until the cafe is almost closed up and now Hiro’s already got his hand on the doorknob. Aunt Cass is cleaning off tables inside and they know she’ll look up any second. Tadashi nods, and Hiro opens the door.

“We’re closing up in just a minute, here.” Cass says, not looking up from the table she’s wiping down.

“Hey, Aunt Cass.” They say together, and she whirls around with wide eyes, dropping the spray bottle in her hand, and Tadashi sends microbots past him, into the cafe, to catch the bottle before it can hit the ground. They all stand in silence for a minute, and Tadashi’s fingers play nervously at his coat sleeves, one hand reaching up to rub at his mangled ear.

“Tadashi.” She says quietly, and he nods, stepping forward. She mirrors him, and pulls him into a hug, nearly crushing his spine and she’s crying and he probably is too, he doesn’t care enough to notice, and he can feel Hiro’s mind at the edge of his, uncertain and still scared despite the warmth of the scene. He makes the microbots nudge Hiro forward until he’s in arm’s reach, wriggles one arm free from Aunt Cass’ bear hug and drags his little brother into it too.

For a few minutes they can almost pretend that everything’s okay.

“You two have got an awful lot of explaining to do.” Aunt Cass says, half a joke.

“We will.” Tadashi promises, and it’s a lie, they’ll never put the weight of what they’ve been through and what they’ve done on her shoulders, but maybe they can stall long enough to come up with a story she’ll believe.

 

•••••••

 

They skirt cautiously around their aunt’s questions until she reluctantly stops asking them, Tadashi goes back to school and brings Hiro with him, and their friends are all so much quieter now but it’s the kind of quiet that keeps them close together, keeps them watching each others’ backs and trying to get back to what they were before. They all learn, not so much by choice but by necessity, how to stop a panic attack from starting, what to do once one already has. They learn when to talk to drive the silence away, when a hand on a shoulder or fingers intertwined will help and when they won’t.

Everyone in school notices the differences-- it’s hard not to, when a dead man comes home with metal insects scurrying over his hands and under his feet, when his brother and friends somehow seem to be further buried in grief and trauma than they’d been when he was dead. People ask questions, just as Gogo predicted, and some go digging, and one person, unbeknownst to Gogo and the others, digs far enough to find blueprints for a portal, and manages to get themselves blocked from contacting Krei industries with questions about the island in the bay.

 

•••••••

 

Tadashi has to stop himself sometimes, from moving when Hiro’s thoughts run through his head. He has to force himself not to follow the order, not to let himself get pushed down under microbot programming, and half the time his resistance doesn’t do anything anyway. Sometimes he catches the beginning of a subconscious order and flicks a bot at his brother’s head, cutting the thought short before Hiro can have it, and Hiro will laugh nervously or smile sheepishly because he never really even realizes what he’s doing.

Sometimes Hiro will be distracted and ask Tadashi to do something, startling violently when his brother obliges, face and mind blank and obedient, and Hiro will shake Tadashi’s arm until he snaps out of it. Hiro always looks so guilty, then, that Tadashi just smiles and assures him that it’s alright, that they made the right decision putting the transmitter in Hiro’s head, because this way they can’t ever be separated again. They always know if the other’s okay and they’ve always made a good team, now they just have the synchronization of thought to match.

 

•••••••

 

In a corner of Fred’s empty mansion, in a closet in a garage no one uses, five bloodstained super-suits sit abandoned, awful memories tied to them like sticky spiderweb. In a realm of swirling clouds of color and light and sound just at the edge of human hearing, a woman sleeps, frozen, and there’s no one left who could’ve known to save her. In a cafe in the city, a family lives happily again, on the surface. In a lab at a school full of the whispers or students and the chittering of microbots, six people live under the weight of their secrets and sins, and you’d think that six is too large a number to keep a secret so big.

But in the end, it isn’t.


End file.
